Meg is the Head of Rural Horizons with FRRR, leading FRRR’s place-based and youth programs. Meg is passionate about community-led social innovation, change and impact. She brings two decades of leadership experience in social impact, community development, international development, community philanthropy and governance, across non-profit, State and Federal Government sectors.

Born and raised on Wadawurrung Country, near Geelong Victoria, Meg loves working with rural, remote and regional communities to build on local strengths and opportunities, and tackle complex systemic and structural barriers – so communities can become more connected and equitable, and thrive on their own terms.

Meg currently holds a few regional governance roles – she is a Board Director of The Good Neighbourhood Project, a sitting Member of the Barwon Regional Partnership, and is on the Steering Committee of Community Foundations Australia’s Community Funds for Gender Equity.  She has a Bachelor of Behavioural Science, a Masters of Social Science in International and Community Development and lives with her husband, three children and (very spoilt) dog in Ocean Grove, Victoria.

Zoe Eather is the Funny Futurist, a multi award-winning engineer, Churchill Fellow, PhD researcher and stand-up comedian helping organisations and communities make sense of the future and their place in it.

Raised in regional Queensland, Zoe brings a practical and optimistic lens to conversations about technology, AI, change and the future. Through her boutique consultancy, she works with industry, government and communities to navigate change, build future-ready capability and create more connected, resilient places.

Combining engineering and technology expertise with humour and storytelling, Zoe helps people move from overwhelm to possibility in an ever changing world.

Lou Conway is CEO of the Country Universities Centre, a not-for-profit network of 28 community-owned study centres that back thousands of regional students who chose to build their futures close to home. She came to the role after 35 years in health, education and business development across regional New South Wales, including founding the UNE SMART Region Incubator, where she raised over $10 million to support regional founders.

Her recent work leading the New England Regional Energy Accord with the Energy Charter positioned regional communities as active partners in the energy transition rather than places to be acted upon. Lou holds a PhD in Regional Development Governance and an MBA, and began her career as an occupational therapist.

She works from a simple conviction: regional Australia needs investment, trust, and the infrastructure to back the talent already there.

Annabel is the Field and Foundation Development Lead at Community Foundations Australia, supporting the growth and development of community foundations and funds through strategic facilitation, governance support, and network development. She was previously Executive Officer of the South West Community Foundation (VIC) from 2020 to 2025, and brings further experience across private philanthropy, local government, and community engagement and development. A proud regional advocate for community-led, place-based approaches, she is a skilled communicator with particular strengths in strategy, governance, regional leadership, and building sector capability.

Annabel also serves as Board Chair of are-able, a regionally based disability employment and social enterprise organisation, and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD).

As Australian Communities Foundation’s Director of Engagement & Advisory, Sally works alongside Fundholders, clients, and partners to build strong relationships and support their philanthropic journeys for greater impact.

Sally is passionate about expanding access to opportunity so people can make meaningful choices about their lives. She is particularly passionate about housing and employment as the foundations for stability, wellbeing, and belonging. Sally is motivated and inspired by work that opens up pathways – whether that’s a second chance or a hundredth – and helps people move forward on their own terms.

Sally is particularly passionate about housing and employment as the foundations for stability, wellbeing, and belonging.

She has spent her career in the for-purpose sector, working across engagement, partnerships and business development, often within social enterprises. She’s held senior roles at organisations including The Big Issue, where she worked on partnerships and revenue initiatives to support vendors and grow impact, and Leadership Victoria, where she designed leadership programs to help organisations respond to complex workforce challenges. Sally is also the Chair of the Centre for Social Impact Course Advisory Committee and a Board Member at StreetSmart Australia.

Joel Johnston is a Central Queensland local, having grown up in Moura, a small rural town supported by the cattle, coal, and cotton industries. He has extensive experience delivering impact across the east coast of regional and remote Australia. Currently, he leads a team responsible for Social Performance and First Nations initiatives on the multi-billion-dollar Inland Rail Project, working at the intersection of infrastructure, community, and economic development.

Joel has a strong track record of building high-performing teams and forging partnerships across government, industry, and community to deliver meaningful social, cultural, and economic outcomes. His work spans diverse industries and localities, from urban areas to regional towns and remote First Nations communities, focusing on community wellbeing, economic participation, and sustainable outcomes.

Passionate about creating lasting change, Joel brings practical insight into how collaboration, innovation, and place-based approaches can strengthen regional communities.

JAZZIFY with songbird Teri Welles

“If you feeling blue, all you’ve got to do is Jazzify!”

With diverse musical skills and life experience, the Jazzify combo puts their own special spin on an ever-increasing range of jazzy, bluesy, classic, popular, “swingin’ and  rockin’ croons and tunes” drawn from music greats such as Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Natalie Cole, the Beatles, Van Morrison, Paul Simon, Michael Buble, Elvis and many more, plus a few originals. Whatever the song may be, Jazzify’s priority is good quality music for good times.

Since 2010, Jazzify’s band members have played throughout the Southern Downs at Warwick’s Jumpers & Jazz and Stanthorpe’s Apple & Grape Harvest Festivals, as well Toowoomba Jazz Society, Stanthorpe Art Gallery, wineries, weddings, functions and special events.

Jazzify boasts a lineup of fine musicians.

Teri Welles (vocals), Jazzify’s songbird, is known across the Southern Downs for her warm, personal song stylings. Born in the USA, Teri has called Australia home for more than half her life. Singing solo, in duos, bands and on albums, Teri’s experience includes jazz, soft rock, country rock and folk. She is well-known in the Granite Belt as a singer, visual artist, member of the One Song choir and a life member of Stanthorpe Little Theatre.

“I have always loved to sing. It makes me happy – even when I’m singing sad songs.” said Teri. “I’m genuinely thrilled we can be part of this year’s Social Impact in the Regions event.”

Graham Muller (keyboard) trained in classical piano from a young age. After finding jazz while playing in the Royal Australian Navy Band, Graham spent years honing his jazz skills on piano and keyboard. As a well-respected, sought-after musician, and all-around nice guy, Graham has played for numerous bands and events around the Southern Downs, Warwick and Toowoomba, also providing arrangements and charts for his fellow musicians.

Andrew Johnson (bass) For over 30 years, Andrew’s professional music journey has been characterised by versatility, from symphony and ballet orchestras to big bands, jazz, funk, soul and Latin ensembles, musical theatre and session recording. The earliest part of his career was all about the trumpet but living in London for a while gave him a fresh perspective and motivation to take bass more seriously – and Andrew is a seriously good bass player. Andrew now performs and records with a number of artists and groups and Jazzify if lucky he lives in the Granite Belt.

Bill Croft (saxophone & clarinet) has been playing jazz since the British Revivalist era. He has played all around the world, including the USA, London, and Moscow. He first played in Australia in Hobart with the popular Sullivan Cove Jazz Band and while Brisbane-based, he played for the very first Jumpers & Jazz Festival. He eventually moved to Warwick, adding his smooth, melodic style to bands ever since.

Steve Clark (drums), is a very talented musician, songwriter/composer, artist, storyteller and primary school supply teacher. He likes telling stories with his original music. In recent years he has played drums for bands in festivals and events in and around Warwick.

Louise Judge has spent more than 25 years working alongside rural and regional communities as they navigate change, challenge and opportunity.

As Manager of the Chinchilla Community Centre, Louise works with local people, volunteers, organisations and community leaders to respond to emerging needs and strengthen community connection, resilience and wellbeing. Over the years her experience includes supporting farming families through drought, coordinating domestic violence and sexual assault services, working with children in care, and helping communities recover and adapt through times of transition.

Throughout her career, Louise has contributed to a range of community-led initiatives and volunteer roles, including helping establish the Red Earth Community Foundation. She is currently on the Board of Neighbourhood Centres Queensland and has served as a board member and advocate in other spaces.

Having grown up in rural New South Wales and raised her family in remote Northern Territory and rural Queensland, Louise brings both professional experience and lived understanding of regional life. Louise is driven by a belief that regional communities already hold the knowledge, strengths and leadership needed to address local challenges, and that lasting change happens when people are supported and included to shape their own future.

Paris Brooke is the Executive Officer and Co-Founder of the Wilderness Collective, a
community-driven initiative transforming Mallacoota, far east Gippsland. With over 25 years of
experience in strategic communications, investor relations, and advocacy, Paris has been
instrumental in securing vital investments and partnerships across the agricultural,
biotechnology and medical device industries.
Moving to Mallacoota in 2019, she co-founded the Wilderness Collective as a cornerstone for
entrepreneurship and innovation in the region. Her leadership has driven the acquisition of a
main street property for the benefit of the community – developing a ‘Innovation, Education and
Employment Hub’, creating the conditions to support livelihoods and opportunities in the
region.

Paris’s career spans roles such as General Manager of an ASX-listed company, Principal of a
Communications Agency, and Policy Manager for a national industry organisation, where she
cultivated high-level networks across government, business, and media. A passionate
advocate for rural development, Paris continues to champion innovative solutions to complex
social and economic challenges.

Jana Hesketh is an award-winning community engagement, community development and event specialist with experience spanning the arts, education, research, government and non-profit sectors. A trusted and experienced leader, Jana has earnt a reputation for building highly impactful teams who deliver transformational projects of benefit to communities and organisations across Queensland.

Since 2024, Jana has served as the General Manager of Government, Communities & Impact for QLD Music Festival (QMF). In this role, she works to ensure the regional & remote communities that host QMF events experience social, cultural and economic benefits that last long after the last note is played.

Teresa Bullock-Smith is a highly experienced economist and demographer with expertise in interpreting complex data to support regional development and planning. At REMPLAN, Teresa helps government, industry, and community stakeholders “know their numbers, plan for the future, collaborate deeply, and tell a compelling story with data.”

Her passion lies in transforming detailed demographic and economic insights into clear, actionable strategies. With a strong focus on population and employment forecasting, Teresa supports clients in planning for growth, navigating market shifts, and making confident, evidence-based decisions. She specialises in place-specific insights that address critical regional challenges such as housing affordability, service provision, and job creation.

A firm believer in breaking down silos, Teresa works across economic development, infrastructure, and social services to embed impact and alignment in decision-making processes. She is particularly skilled at turning data into visually compelling, easily digestible narratives that foster stakeholder engagement and drive informed action.

Youth Futures Theme Convenors

Futures Isle exists to support people, communities and organisations to find the next step on their journey.

We partner with organisations, projects and initiatives that share our values and have meaningful impact. We are facilitators, program managers/developers and consultants.

Most importantly though, we love people and places and want to see them shine.

Talitha ‘Taz’ Devadass

Taz lives and breathes futures. As one of Australia’s first Entrepreneurship Facilitators from 2017-2020, she mentored over 800 people to support them finding potential pathways for empowered futures and is thrilled to see so many participants’ businesses still thriving.

She believes in community development through the sharing of ideas, transfer of skills and relationship-driven collaboration. Taz’s dynamic approach was recognised when she was awarded 2018 ABC Trailblazer, 2018 Foundation for Young Australians: Young Social Pioneer and 2019 Telstra Business Women’s Awards: Emerging Leader Tasmania.

At her core, Taz is the ideas queen; she dreams audacious dreams and questions the status quo to achieve the best outcome, and refuses to settle for anything less.

She has also collected over 350 board games and also makes the best road trip playlists.

Emilee Rigby

Em loves impact. She has a background as a commercial specialist, providing high-level procurement strategy advice during her time at the Department of Defence. This role also saw her travelling (nationally and internationally) to deliver bespoke training courses, resulting in over 1200 commercial and project management professionals trained in contracting methodology. Her determination and facilitation skill in delivering these programs saw her recognised as Leader of the Future at International Association for Contract and Commercial Management’s 2018 Australasia Conference. (She’s still the most proud of being named Deloraine Drama Festival’s Most Promising Actor 2008).

Em’s strategic experience makes her your girl when it comes to implementation; she has the ability to comprehensively plan for successful outcomes, spot problems and logic flaws during concept ideation, and then report on these outcomes. Plus, she loves talking all things contracts!

Fiona’s career has spanned the non-profit, government and university sectors in Australia and the USA. Fiona is the CEO of The John Villiers Trust; a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD); and a Director of Foodbank Queensland.

She was former Chair of statewide domestic violence service, DVConnect, Executive Director of food relief charity, FareShare and CEO of Brisbane Powerhouse. Fiona has extensive experience building strong relationships with stakeholders in various industries including the community service industry, arts and culture, and philanthropic sector.

Fiona holds a Bachelor of Arts from Queensland University of Technology, a Masters from the University of New South Wales and completed the Executive Program for Non-profit Leaders at Stanford University.

Jenny is the driving force behind Tender Funerals. She has decades of experience in community development and believes in a strengths-based approach. Jenny has a reputation for innovation and developing projects which support and empower communities to create a culture of help rather than harm. Tender Funerals is the result of a community believing that funerals should be an affordable, meaningful and ultimately as much as possible healing. Tender Funerals Australia was called into being by the many communities that reached out to have a Tender Funerals in their area and Jenny is proud to be a part of the team that is answering their call.

Dave Parker is the National Director of Frontier Services, an organisation that provides practical, pastoral, and spiritual care for people across rural and remote Australia. As a creative executive, he embraces the dynamically changing business environment and brings innovation and collaboration to organisations and staff growth. Prior to joining Frontier Services Dave was the Group Director of Engagement for Scripture Union Australia, COO of a media outlet, and over 25 years in the music industry (record labels EMI and Universal Music).

With his love of the outback and rural spaces, and commitment to support and provide for those in need, he sees it as a privilege and an honour to be leading a passionate team of staff, Bush Chaplains and volunteers in this season of Frontier Services.

Dave sits on the boards of Hope Media and Emu Music. He holds a Bachelor of Business, a Masters in Business Management, Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and a Certificate in Theology.

Karen Wiik is a seasoned senior executive with over 25 years of experience in economic development, investment transactions, and strategic stakeholder management within the public sector.

Holding a Bachelor of Economics and a Master of Business Administration, Karen has consistently demonstrated her expertise in delivering impactful investment outcomes.

Since 2018, she has successfully delivered several investment programs for the Queensland Government. Her leadership has been recognised through multiple Premier’s Awards for Excellence. Karen is excited to use her investment delivery expertise and strong collaborative approach to lead the implementation of the impact investing initiatives in the Social Enterprise and Impact Investing Roadmap 2025.

After a long career in State and Local Government at Director level I retired in 2021. The Director roles always involved major community consultation in sometimes controversial areas like planning. But since retiring I’ve devoted a lot of my time to community now on four diverse community committees/ boards in school education, university education, a church parish council and importantly to this conference Vice President for the long running Jacaranda Festival a role I have held for 4 years.

The festival ran by 8 community volunteers is still ‘shing bright’ in its 93^rd year – originating to bring some joy after the Great Depression. The festival celebrating the purple flowering in late October of the 1,700 Jacaranda trees planted in the late 1800’s. The festival is huge running over. 3 weeks and has 26 main events – with over 100,000 attending – 44000 of those tourists as verified by credit card expenditure. The festival adds around $7 million to business turnover and creates around thirty  jobs.

The festival relies on a ‘purple army’ of volunteers and has major local business sponsorship of each event. The whole community is involved from the youngest kid to the oldest senior citizen, this sometimes-crazy festival thrives on its community diversity and is lots of fun.

The festival has lead up events which run all year through its major youth development program of candidates with numerous fund raisers from February.

In recent years like across the nation due to a decline in volunteers the festival has turned more to corporate help and developed closer input from local businesses – notable amongst these the large correction centre – Serco now contributing hundreds of hours by staff on a volunteer basis and prisoners for setup. Ongoing increases in regulatory costs creates major ongoing challenges.

The festival prides itself as a unifying voice for whole the Grafton community. A point noted by Kerry and Chad during last year’s conference at Grafton.

Benny is a systems facilitator and collaborator who comes alive when people work across boundaries to create something bigger than any one agency or organisation could achieve alone.  For over 20 years he’s worked with government, nonprofits, and communities on complex challenges — drawing on leadership development, systems change, and futures thinking.

Through Systems Collaboration Partners, Benny supports leaders and organisations to innovate across sectors, navigate complexity and deliver outcomes that last.  Much of Benny’s work happens in rural, regional and remote Australia, working alongside communities to shape solutions that are both practical and inclusive. His approach blends structure with humanity, because relationships shape what meaningful outcomes become possible.

Claire has worked in Australia and overseas in a variety of roles ranging from changing cultures and developing assets to a year in Whitehall as a Chief of Staff. Claire has worked in private and public organisations, and government across stakeholder engagement, asset management and organisational change.

Claire is now the CEO of Ability Enterprises, a successful not-for-profit social enterprise employing around 95 people in Toowoomba in regional Queensland. They hold contracts with local government and private businesses, giving people a chance to transform their lives through meaningful employment. Under Claires’ stewardship, Ability Enterprises has doubled in numbers of people employed and tripled their turnover in the last 2 years.

On a personal level, Claire is passionate about travel, horse riding, social justice, the Rural Fire Brigade and Wildlife Rescue.

Mum of three, business owner, Future Care Project founder.

Lover of strong coffee and stronger policy reform.

Now based in Goondiwindi, I haven’t always called regional Australia home but it’s where I’ve found both purpose and community.

After years of living in cities all over the world and working across various professional sectors, an unexpected move to the bush opened my eyes to how much regional families are forced to go without, especially regarding essential services like childcare. Advocacy has always been part of who I am, however I never imagined it would lead me here. When you live in a community where families are continually forced to choose between care and career, between remaining in the workforce or staying at home, or between relocating for services or staying close to family, you eventually reach a point where you either accept the system as it is or decide to fight for something better. The Future Care Project is my way of choosing the latter. It’s a stand against the idea that where you live should determine the quality of care your children receive or the opportunities you have as a parent or business owner to contribute and thrive. When we invest in children and empower parents we create the conditions for regional communities to thrive, now and into the future.

The Future Care Project has operated independently since its inception and we are also actively seeking partnerships, philanthropic alignment or sponsorship to continue our work.

Ashley Watt, the visionary behind Why Leave Town, holds a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Sydney and has amassed over 15 years of experience in consumer market research. His impressive portfolio includes collaborations with major brands like Westpac, Telstra, and Dairy Farmers. In 2007, Ashley channelled his extensive knowledge into supporting smaller retailers, founding Why Leave Town with the mission of promoting local shopping.

Raised in the tight-knit community of Narrabri, NSW, Ashley, alongside his business partner Justin Smith, identified a gap in the market for local gift cards. This insight led to the creation of the Why Leave Town gift card, a pioneering initiative designed to keep spending within local communities. Since its inception, the program has expanded to over 80 communities, generating $31 million in local spending.

Tom Allen is Founder and CEO of Impact Boom, one of Australia’s leading purpose-driven intermediaries, helping changemakers globally to create a better world. As social innovation experts, their advisory services, initiatives, programs and partnerships help people & planet to thrive. Impact Boom has worked intensively with over 335 purpose-led organisations to help them launch and scale and featured over 700 global leaders on their podcast.

Tom’s work has been recognised with two Australian Good Design Awards. He led the successful Australian bid for the Social Enterprise World Forum held in 2022; a project which catalysed sector growth nationally.